Describe your happy free day!

Okay, not all days will leave us feeling as if we are Julie Andrews spinning around on that mountain top singing "The Sound of Music," but so many of my days leave me with just that feeling. I'd like to tell you about our day, and I'd love to hear about yours!

Last night I was about to go to bed when a spring issue of Smithsonian caught my eye. Fascinated, I stood there (constantly "about to go to bed," ha!) and read about the Wright brothers' experiments and first engine-powered flight, the plight of polar bears who are dying early due to PCB exposure, the controversial decision in Transylvania to build a Dracula theme park...

When Andy, 3, woke up he found a large piece of soft foam packing material dh left out for him. He held it up with wonder. First he used it as a carpet for his "office" (the ever-morphing cardboard box), then it was a surfboard.

As he flipped through the same Smithsonian magazine at breakfast, asking about various pictures, I remembered that I had a kit of 15 paper airplanes somewhere. I told him, and he was very excited.

When we went upstairs to find them, we sent a quick e-mail to the Fisher Price Company requesting a catalog. Andy had suggested writing to them to ask for more Little People. 😊 He typed in "Fisher Price" happily as I told him which letters to find on the keyboard.

We sat at the kitchen table and assembled the easiest plane in the kit. (I am impatient and not precise like DH, lol.) Andy helped with organizing the pieces and gluing, and then he experimented with the glue doing whatever he wanted with scraps of paper. He glued the sign that said "Delta Airplane" onto a piece of paper and announced, "This is because it's the Delta Airplane Restaurant. Each table has a Delta airplane or a helicopter or a car carrier or a construction vehicle on it, because that's how the restaurant is."

We were listening to NPR, and every once in a while he'd get a real kick out of a word he heard. "Blitz- I love that word!"

We went upstairs and proceeded to try and fly the plane out the window into the backyard. Andy threw it, it got stuck on the roof, we laughed, and I told him we had to find something to snag it again. We used a broom. The second flight resulted in a nose-dive onto the lawn.

While out back, Andy decided to play in his sandbox. I joyfully experimented with flight while he played, picked grapes off the neighbor's vines and ate them (remembering to check if they were rotting first), scattered sunflower seed on the feeder and in the grass, and discovered that a tree branch makes a natural hook for a bubble wand. He wanted the last of the seed for his indoor gravel pit, so we brought it inside.

Dh came home from some errands and we all ate lunch together, having a lively conversation complete with silly stories, then Andy and I took a delicious 2.5 hour nap cuddled up together with two stuffed dogs and a stuffed frog.

Right now dh and Andy are downstairs doing various things, including reading, watching Antiques Roadshow and talking excitedly about stuff they see, and jamming- dh plays guitar and Andy has a bucket full of instruments, and lately has been going nuts on the harmonica.

I must mention also that yesterday Andy made milkshakes for us. I will never forget the look on his face as he chopped up the bananas himself with a plastic knife.

I WILL NOT GIVE UP THIS KIND OF LIFE. 😊

You know, I spent a good 30 of my 35 years in some type of structured setting, striving to please others and live up to their standards, which I convinced myself were my own. I feel that I will be detoxing from this for the rest of my life, and it's a joyful process. Living outside the box makes me a person at peace, a person people constantly observe as "always so happy." I used to be very good at "blooming where I was planted," which was of course not true happiness, and the strain inevitably showed. I am finally happy on my own terms, and the difference is obvious to me.

Not that I don't have my monster moments. But they are moments, not related to any deep-seated unhappiness that I'm not living the way I want to live. Been there, done that. Buh-bye.

A long post from one who is glad to be among you!